Synctera’s remote workspace unites a distributed team
Synctera unites local banks and emerging fintech startups. Born during the pandemic, they use Notion to plan, execute, and grow their team across the world.
Insights from
Olivier Beaulieu
Software engineer
Zoe Schafer
People experience partner
1
Efficient retrospectives to accelerate learnings
As a fast-moving startup, Synctera makes it a priority to run monthly retrospectives. It's a time to evaluate work, reflect on progress, and course-correct projects. Before Notion, these meetings ate up full days. Now, the entire process takes just one hour.
The whole company brainstorms what went right and wrong the past month. With Notion, retrospectives have gone from reluctant last-mile work to a streamlined part of the company's growth. Instead of laboring with whiteboards, sticky notes, and printouts, people can focus on the most important thing: the work.
Teammates can vote or comment on each piece of feedback to discuss what went right or wrong.
Notion helps us save everything for posterity. We can look back over the past three months and see trends or outliers before they disrupt our work.
Olivier Beaulieu
Software engineer
Software engineer
2
Moving proposals forward asynchronously
Uniting local banks and emerging fintech startups is no small feat. That’s why engineering accounts for more than half of Synctera’s team. But organizing this growing department's ideas, plans, and pitches was a logistical nightmare.
Now, the team uses a Notion database to manage all internal proposals. Their proposal template has predefined sections for purpose, solution, and questions. This last section is where the magic happens. Team members drop in, leave comments, and make suggestions. All this happens asynchronously, so everyone's voices are heard, no matter where they are.
Engineers use status fields to track progress — from pending and planned to accepted and implemented. Even when a proposal goes live, it stays in the database, creating a permanent record of what they did and why they did it.
Notion acts as a digital archive for every decision Synctera’s engineers make.
3
Why buy a dozen tools when one can do it all?
As a fledgling startup, Synctera has to do more with less. Its team got scrappy and used Notion to build out a bunch of tools for different teams. Among others, they created an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to support the company’s aggressive hiring goals and a CRM to power its early sales activity.
And as Synctera grew, Notion grew with them. Individual team wikis, new processes, and more supported the work of their flourishing team.
Teams customize their wikis to match their individual ways of working.
There was no reason for us to buy a bunch of enterprise tools when we could build everything we needed on Notion.
Zoe Schafer
People experience partner
People experience partner
4
A scalable onboarding process to fuel growth
Synctera wants to double headcount each year. That sort of ambition throws up a huge challenge: how do you onboard that many people without pulling senior engineers off their work?
The solution: an onboarding checklist in Notion. It introduces new employees to all the core parts of the company — team directory, operating procedures, and so on. The checklist is a living document, too. Synctera encourages new employees to add anything that’s missing.
“With Notion, we have a place to onboard new employees and leave them to soak up all of the information," says Zoe.
As Synctera builds out its departments, they’re tailoring the onboarding process. While new engineers work through a technical checklist, marketers get one focused on go-to-market strategy.
Onboarding checklists are a vital resource for new hires and long-term employees.
